Life Imitates Art
by Daria234
Summary: Neal & Moz friendship. Futurefic about Moz, aging, and the painting he keeps in his attic. Set 35 years in the future  we meet Neal's kids/grandkids .  Notes:  For the Prompt, "Mozzie, Gen, Picture of Dorian Gray," for R for the wcpairings fic exchange.


Holding the sturdy frame in his lap, Moz looks down at his hands. He sees his age hanging loose on them, his skin like wrinkled cardboard and just as dry.

He has lately been more aware of the gaps in himself, the places where time has sloughed off little pieces of who he used to be. His hands used to be so swift, so nimble, so _good_ at taking and swindling and forging and all the rest.

Now, they shake. Not much. But enough.

And he can see still, but not well. Not with the sharpness he once had.

You had to be a fine specimen of humanity, both physically and mentally, in order to be a criminal. A true criminal, anyway, a truly free human being, who breaks the greatest rule of all - the one that says that people need rules in the first place.

But now Moz could do little but brew coffee for the friends who still visited, able to offer little more professional assistance than the old phone numbers of old contacts, most of whom would have surely disconnected their lines by now (and even that's assuming they were still alive). Even Mozzie's numerous ex-lovers, whom he used to be able to count on for the occasional on-again, had been rarer, and more fragile, in their visits.

Moz feels it acutely, this slow drift into weightlessness. Which is why, more than ever, he has taken to spending his nights staring at the treasure in Saturday's attic.

His painting. His favorite painting, the one he saw and had to have and couldn't let go of no matter how much he needed the money. The one nobody - not even his oldest friend - knew he had. Neal, in fact, would have been surprised (and impressed) that Mozzie had managed to keep it a secret from him for so many years.

The painting still takes his breath away every time. He takes it out of the crate where it is carefully stored, sits on a metal folding chair below the only light in the attic, and lets the bottom of the frame rest on his knee so he doesn't have to hold it up. He can see his hands start to tremble before he steadies them, can see the spotty paleness of his skin, his fingers so much thinner and less dexterous than they used to be. But even though his hands have changed, even though everything has changed, his painting never does. His painting is always in its spring.

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Moz has always thought of people as works of art. The problem is that they're usually middlebrow, derivative, mass-produced works of art.

Not that he's a snob or anything.

People like to think that their personalities, their identities, run deep. Mozzie understands that these things are just brushings atop the surface, just so much ideological facepaint. When it comes down to it, the human being is just the body that those-in-power use to write their bloody history.

Moz knows that this is true of himself, too - that even his own well-tended sense of rebellion has been a way for the system to keep his truths at the margins. He knows that this thing called "Mozzie" is not, in the fragile end, going to be any different than any of the bourgeois masses. He knows that no matter what pleasure and comfort he steals from a world that tries to keep it locked away, in the end, he is just another thing that society made.

He lucked out, since society messed up with him, accidentally made him free. But there's no getting around it. Like everyone else, he was crafted by the government, by society, by the needs and desires of these tumultuous years and decades that go by the oxymoron of "modern life"...

Mozzie thinks sometimes of his childhood, those years when, for most poor bastards, individuality is siphoned off, never to be seen again.

For Mozzie, it was, of course, a miserable childhood.

But it allowed him to see behind the curtain, it gave him his first and memorable forbidden glimpse into the artist's toolbox. He could see firsthand how a different place, and a different tyrant running it, made for an entirely different world. He saw different kids in different homes, each of them built to fit their environment, each of them chiseled down like statues until their form fit the aesthetics of the day, the preferences of the foster parent, the rules of the group home.

And then there was Mozzie. Who wasn't made right. Who had a sour face instead of a good throwing arm. Who stared down at his books and questioned everything and never hesitated to correct adults when they were being stupid.

And then Moz grew up, somehow, and learned to turn his not-made-right into a business. And it turned out that a lot of the places Moz ended up were full of people who also hadn't quite been made right. Some people were too violent, some were too sad, some were too desperate, and some were just too empty. But in these misfit corners of the human spirit, Moz could gaze directly on all the ways the system drew its lines and colors onto his sorry species.

It's always where the system breaks down that you can finally see what the system was trying to do in the first place, Mozzie knows. After all, you don't notice a building when all its surfaces are smooth; it's easy enough to walk by and feel like the building was always there, like the birds or the sky or the trees. It's only when the beams crumble or the roof bends that you can see the shoddy workmanship, and then - all of a sudden - you remember: there was an architect.

And so it was with people, Mozzie had found. Some were made to fit in. Some, through a fortunate hitch, could stand out. A few, like Mozzie or Neal, were original, were vital, because they grasped those glitches tightly and rode them as far away from ordinary as they could go. (Before Neal settled down in his picket fence life, that is, complete with a job and a spouse and a son and then a granddaughter). But in the end, they were still products of the same factory that churned out everybody else.

Everyone is a work of art. Some are even good works of art.

But nobody is a masterpiece. Not even Mozzie.

Definitely not Mozzie.

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Mozzie thinks that this knowledge, this awareness that one has failed to be truly great art, is what drives people to acquire art of the kind one can hold and keep. Art that one can, if one is the conventional sort, hang on the wall and show off to one's friends and rivals. Mozzie thinks collecting art (legally or otherwise) is a natural impulse, and, overall, a good one.

The first time Mozzie saw his painting, he understood what it was like for people who fell in love at first sight. Or for people who, years after being separated, finally found their long-lost twin.

At the moment of that first encounter, Mozzie could do nothing but stand there and gaze in a stupor. His eyes drank in all they could: the brushstrokes, frenzied but somehow meticulous, and the colors, muted from a distance but vibrant with bright specks when viewed up close. And a strange sensation swept over him, a disconcerting pulse of something bold and strange and almost like solace: looking at that painting, Mozzie, for the first time in his life, didn't feel alone. No other work of art, and certainly no other person, had ever made him feel that there was something else in the world that was like him. Even Neal, his truest friend, wasn't actually _like_ Mozzie. But as he stared at the painting, small but overwhelming, hanging in some overlooked corner of Lausanne's Collection de l'Art Brut, he knew that this painting was the closest thing he'd ever come to finding another Mozzie.

Naturally, it was an abstract.

As soon as Mozzie caught his breath, he started thinking of ways he could pull off a solo heist (he wasn't sharing this one, that was for sure). Two days later, the painting was in New York, in Mozzie's best hiding place, where it has remained ever since.

Mozzie takes it out to look at it once in a while, but only when he needs it. He resists the urge to touch it, which would allow the oils of his skin to damage it, and he keeps at the precisely correct temperature in its dark box, making sure that age will never touch its splendid surface.

He did look up its history once, guiltily, as if he were reading a friend's diary, and found that the artist never produced any other painting of note. But Moz didn't care; it wasn't the artist's story that made a work a masterpiece, regardless of whatever the gallery sheep thought.

And besides, Mozzie had always known his painting was one of a kind.

It brought a contentment, a companionship, that nothing else did. And if at some point, he started thinking of the painting as a living thing, then...well, there was nothing wrong with that, Moz decided.

Every great artist in history thought so, after all; they all said that in the last stages of being painted - during the birth pangs - a work of art takes on a life of its own. At the end, it always feels like the work itself is telling the artist what to do, ordering the painter where to put that next stroke, whispering to the author what the character wants to do.

Unlike a person, who is ultimately written by the forces of history, a work of art manages to write itself.

Yet another reason that a work of art makes for a finer friend than most.

And as Moz grew older, as everything changed around him, as his small yet tenacious sense of security started crumbling away, he found himself looking at the painting more and more, taking in its lines and tones like they were his anchor. The dynamism of the brushwork still captured him, still made the painting look, somehow, as if it were in motion, pushing its way into the world in some turbulence of shifting lights and hues. But no matter; whatever motion he could observe in the brushstrokes, the painting itself was solid, imperturbable. Thanks to Mozzie's zealous care, it hasn't aged a day.

Mozzie knows what he is doing: he knows he is becoming one of those silly old men who fall in love with things. His logical side knows perfectly well that he is only a step away from being the old man who keeps his decades-old high school football trophy on his bedstand, or the widower who sleeps with his wife's nightgown folded neatly at the foot of the bed. But Mozzie, when it comes down to it, just doesn't care.

He is willing to be silly, and he is willing to be delusional. Mozzie wants what he wants and Mozzie loves what he loves, and it just doesn't matter if that fits with other people's own little pictures of reality. And this conviction, more than the painting even, was the solid rock that wouldn't float away, no matter what else ever did.

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Now, though, he worries. Mozzie is afraid about what will happen to the painting when he is gone. He doesn't want to think about doing an injustice to this masterpiece that, over the years, has done so much for him.

He doesn't want to think about the painting, neglected and ill cared for, carted around from gallery to gallery like an unwanted child, never finding a home.

So as he sits with his painting, the pair of them resting together, he tries to formulate a plan.

He had decided long ago that most of his belongings would be left to Neal and his family. A few works of art - the ones that aren't registered as stolen - will be donated to be displayed at public elementary schools, in the hopes that not _every_ child will be fooled into the brutal proposition that art is a luxury and not a necessity.

Moz isn't sure what to do about his favorite painting, though.

Neal would take good care of it. But it would just be one of many paintings and sculptures and antique books that Neal would keep hidden. Moz still chuckled at the thought that they were still friends, two strange old men who still played chess every week as they talked about opera and game theory and crime; it was one of the few kind surprises of old age, since for a while, Moz was worried that neither of them would make it past 50.

But Neal - like he did so many things - had aged gracefully. Now in his 60's, Neal was still energetic and ludicrously quick on his feet and in his wits, but far less eager to please and astound than when Neal was still in the business. Despite Mozzie's gruff protests about normalcy and the perils of white pickets, he had to admit that all in all, Neal's change had been for the better. At the very least, he didn't have to worry about Neal so much. Even if Moz suspected that Neal was the same Neal Caffrey inside. He certainly trusted that Neal would not have forgotten how to cache an inherited collection of stolen goods. But again, how could Mozzie throw his favorite painting in with the rest of his goods, like it meant nothing more than a fond memory of better times and braver heists?

Of course, Mozzie could always just... _tell_ Neal to take special care of his painting. Moz thinks about this. It would require Mozzie to tell Neal something he has never told anyone. But why should he care what Neal knows after he is gone? And besides, it's not as if Neal, of all people, would judge.

Finally, he writes a note to place inside the crate where he stores his painting:

"My dearest oldest friend, I have never seen myself in anything or anyone as much as I have in this painting. M. "

Moz could leave that note in the crate and have the crate delivered to Neal after he was gone. Neal would read the note, believe it, and would keep the painting forever. Mozzie is sure of this. Neal wouldn't even be bothered that he, the best friend, took second place to a painting; Neal understood him, and always had.

But Moz tears the note into pieces. Truthfully, as much as it would make things easier, Moz just can't do that to Neal. He would take the responsibility to heart, and hang the painting in his room, and talk to it like it was Mozzie himself. Neal would dust it every day, and every day he would cry over the friend he lost. That was just how Neal was, even now, and Moz really didn't want to put the kid through that.

Moz snorts suddenly as he realizes that after all this time, he still thinks of Neal as a kid that needs protecting.

And maybe he is.

But he's going to have to figure out what to do about the painting.

Neal's son is, if anything, even more sensitive than Neal is. And he grew up with Uncle Mozzie, so that would be the same issue; the painting was a gift and a comfort and shouldn't end up with someone who would see in it nothing but pain. And if Mozzie is being honest with himself, Aaron is really not very interested in art. And even less interested in stolen property. Mozzie suspects his bizarre tastes are a classic case of rebellion against his father figures, but it does make for a challenge when it comes to his painting. And besides, Aaron's home is not fit for any luxury items, since he lets his 14 adopted dogs run free about his house.

Moz thinks about his other old friends, then, and then his old allies, all his exes. Even his old enemies, if they truly loved art. For some reason, he just doesn't want his painting to be with someone he didn't know personally. He mentally goes through as many people as he can remember, but still cannot figure out a proper home for it.

Finally, though, he is hit with the answer. Fiona Diana Caffrey, Neal's granddaughter. Sure, she's only 10 years old, an issue which Mozzie had first assumed would make it too great a responsibility for her. But the more Mozzie thinks about it, the more he believes that her age shouldn't be that much of an issue. Because in every other respect, she's the perfect choice.

For one thing, she doesn't take after the Caffrey side of her family, at least not entirely. Fiona is calm, practical, and inclined to make decisions with her head and not just her heart. She has none of those Caffrey extremes of sentimentality or impulsiveness, but she has the good qualities in spades: loyalty, intelligence, a kind heart, and a love of art and beauty. She's like Mozzie in some ways, as well; she was suspicious by nature, and disinclined to believe something just because she was told. But in other ways, she is thoroughly herself. She could even, when needed, be hard as nails; when her grandmother had gotten sick, it was little Fiona who yelled at all the overprotective hovering men (including Mozzie) to "back the crap off and stop treating her like she's broken!" And it was little Fiona who broke the news to her own father when one of the dogs died, comforting him instead of the other way around. And even though she doesn't like to steal (which is a shame, Mozzie thought), she is always happy to indulge Moz by learning the basics, like picking pockets or slipping restraints. She is already faster than Mozzie at jimmying locks, even at her young age. Mozzie decides, then. Fiona, it would be. She is responsible enough, she would never abandon it, and she would have the sense not to be made sad by a painting that spent most of its days making Moz happy.

"She will take good care of you," Moz says then, smiling at down at the masterpiece resting in his wrinkled hands. "And in one hundred years, you will be in the same exquisite state you are now."

He laughs then, thinking of an irony. He says to his painting, to his twin, "I am your picture of Dorian Gray, mon cherie. I am getting older so that you will not have to - even when I'm gone, you'll always be here." He laughed again, this time more softly, a roughness in his throat. "There's no need to fear, my darling, my one. I won't let you crumble. I won't let you fade."

(end)


End file.
